Jim Ingraham: Who will want to coach the Browns?

Michael Allen Blair/MBlair@21st-CenturyMedia.com

Browns CEO Joe Banner and owner Jimmy Haslam field questions from reporters during Monday's press conference discussing the firing of head coach Rob Chudzinski after less than one year at the helm of the Browns.

Give them this much: They are un-insultable.
Halfway through Monday’s saber-rattling, hastily called news conference necessitated by The Sunday Night Coaching Massacre, they were asked point-blank, by a voice from the back of the room because, well, the people have a right to know:
“Are the Three Stooges running this operation?”
No, said genial, unflappable Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, quickly reassuring the fan base that, despite appearances, Larry, Curly and Moe are not in the building, and, oh, by the way, “We have the best fans in the world!”
You have to admit it takes some pretty slick Tennessee waltzing to dance out of the way of a loaded question leading with the crown of its helmet and into a shamelessly patronizing tribute to the customers.
So much for Monday’s showstopping, Stooge-stopping moment, even if it was apropos of everything.
So there they were: Haslam and Browns CEO/Acting General Manager Joe Banner, calmly capping the calamity caused by The Sunday Night Coaching Massacre, wherein Rob Chudzinski was fired 11 months into his four-year contract.
Missing from the dais was Mike “Waterboy” Lombardi, the titled, though only perfunctory general manager, who was apparently making a pizza run, but is never invited to these sorts of things, anyway.
It was Banner and Haslam who came out of the kitchen to face the heat, and they were only carefully contrite. There were no “Boy, did we blow this one big time!” mea culpas for the hiring of Chudzinski, whom they anointed the Golden Boy in January and Dudzinski in December.
Haslam was quick to point out that it was “an expensive move,” patting himself on the back, even in failure, for his willingness to pay Chud $10 million over the next three years not to coach the Browns.
What a guy.
So now the job is open (yawn) again, and, given the events of (take your pick) the previous 24 hours, the last 11 months, or the previous 14 years, why would anyone even want it?
“Right now,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, “the Cleveland job has a moat surrounding it with alligators swimming in it.”
It might be not just the worst currently available NFL coaching job, but the worst NFL coaching job, period. It might be worse than any NBA coaching job or any Major League Baseball managing job.
That’s what made the Chudzinski firing so ill-advised. Who wants to hitch their wagon to this train wreck? In 2014, the Browns will be playing for their third different coach in the past three years.
In the last 44 years, the Browns have had 17 head coaches, the Steelers three. In the AFC North, the last four coaching changes have all been made by the Browns.
Haslam, sounding equal parts naïve and delusional, said he’s had NFL people tell him, “Do you know what you’ve got there? Do you know what a great franchise that is? They talk about it in terms of the Packers and Steelers.”
That’s odd, because everyone else talks about it in terms of the Buccaneers and Jaguars.
In nine of the last 11 years, the Browns were 5-11 or 4-12 — and they have the dismal draft history and dumpster full of discarded coaches to prove it.
Why would any coach who has any other options have any interest at all in coming to this graveyard for coaches? Why would a coach want to come to work for a front office that just fired a coach 11 months after it hired him?
It’s probably one reason why the Browns almost always hire head coaches who have never been head coaches before. Experienced head coaches can usually get better jobs than this one.
Traditionally, the Browns are bottom feeders. Their pool of candidates are usually offensive or defensive coordinators looking for their first head coaching job, and willing to put up with all the nonsense connected to this one. The next coach hired by the Browns will be the second coach hired by the Browns after Mike Holmgren said he hoped Pat Shurmur was the last head coach he would ever have to hire.
Shurmur was the last head coach hired by Holmgren — and the first one fired by Haslam/Banner. Now the search (yawn) is on again.
“We’re not naïve to the fact that we just let a first-year head coach go, but we’re confident we can still attract the right candidate here,” Haslam said.
Because, hey, it’s not like the hiring is being done by Larry, Curly and Moe.
“I feel confident,” Haslam said, “that we will be able to convince people that this is not a good but a great place to coach.”
Tell that to Chudzinski ,,, Shurmur ,,, Eric Mangini ,,, Romeo Crennel ,,,